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[dr_dre]

Those sound like good plans, wild rose--especially the painting! This is rather OT, but a friend just sent me a link to a website where crafters and fine artists sell their wares: http://www.etsy.com/

[wild_rose]

What a great link! Thank you!

I was actually considering getting some paintings done over my break, and selling them. My surreal stuff fits in with that site (especially in that it's really surreal, as in Magritte, de Chirico, and the like).

[betty_p]

Wild Rose, I'm sorry about your search. I've been in your shoes many, many times--hard not to be bitter (not that I am--see below).

But here's a hang-in-there story: yesterday I got an interview request for a job I'd given up on weeks ago. In four years on the market, this is only the second time that my job-search package has generated an interview.

Miracles do happen.

[wild_rose]

Miracles do happen.

I feel like I need divine intervention.

And alcohol....lots of alcohol.

[betty_p]

Here <passes the magnum of Little Penguin pinot>.

[libbilou]

Why is a PhD called a terminal degree?  Because it will either kill you or have you kill somebody.  It does take a toll on you physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

I killed myself to get it and now it's killing me.

I feel the same way!

[rodentmind]

Miracles do happen.

I feel like I need divine intervention.

And alcohol....lots of alcohol.

I'm with you, wild rose, but not if your drink of choice is Wild Irish Rose.

[wild_rose]

No, drink of choice this week is going to be either G&T or White Russians.

If it ever stops snowing so i can go to the liquor store.

[wild_rose]

It's still snowing and I'm out of alcohol.

[anon33]

It's still snowing and I'm out of alcohol.

Can buy liquor on line.

[richardtaborgreene]

I know this is off the wall but publish all your homework as a book, now, while your job hunt is just starting.  Why?

Putting years of homework into a big pile, then organizing that pile, then recontexting and rewriting individual pieces to reflect their final context/place-in-pile-order, will get you to review "all you have thought" in getting to where you are ABD or ABJ (all but job).   The review of yourself, rewriting it to fit enthusiasms now in the world/disciplines around you, is PERFECT preparation for job hunting. 

Furthermore, the book becomes your job hunting--it automates the hunt so you can do something else, publish, research, make money, travel, while your book hunts for jobs for you.   

Furtherfurthermore, it works.   I took all my homework at the University of Michigan for two masters and a PHD and published a monstrous 886 page book, instead of job hunting.   I went to industry instead to make serious money (triple academic pay for young faculty at Harvard) while that book found me a job.   Months later, while it was not yet published, still in manuscript form, the Univ. of Chicago phoned me with an inadequate salary offer so I rejected them.  A few months later they called again, having fixed the salary problem.    Books, big well researched, well packaged ones, are a great job hunt process.   

I know this sounds too much but that attitude, that what I wrote was "too much", is an un-hirable attitude.   If your work for homework in grad school is unworthy of publishing, then you are unworth of being hired by decent level schools, one could argue.   If you are too shy to gather mere homework and rework it so it is fit to be published, that is more understandable but that shyness also makes you unhirable.  Only if you are proud enough in all your past recent thinking to publish it, do you have the attitude that gets you hired. 

You might as well publish a book of your homework as your job hunt--it will work as well as lots of shy, timid, self doubt filled interviews and resumes.   If you work the past 8 years is worthy of being hired, publish it!
 

[the_honey_badger]

Yeah, *that's* where I went wrong! I didn't put all my "homework" in a big pile and publish it!  That is why the U of Chicago hasn't personally called to recruit me. What an idiot I am!


Brother, what a crazy post.

[epistephiliac]

Yeah, *that's* where I went wrong! I didn't put all my "homework" in a big pile and publish it!  That is why the U of Chicago hasn't personally called to recruit me. What an idiot I am!

Yes, Yankee, you totally missed the boat. Why, Epi's Big Pile o' Homework is going to be published by Oxford University Press next month! I'm sure it was the key to my getting a job. I also expect the royalties to fund my retirement.

I mean, it was either dump it in the recycling bin or send it to OUP. The decision was easy. I thought everyone did the same!

[compneurodoc]

What?!! I heard about trying to publish "everything you've done" but homework?? Is this still the academic careers forum?

[blakesmistress]

Hi everyone,
Very happy to have found this forum.  I am currently a grad student, finishing up an M.A. with hopes to enter a Ph.D. program in the fall.

A question for any and all:  Faced with the stressful job search, suffering through the poverty and apprehensions concerning the future, how common would you say it is for holders of higher degrees to obtain a teaching license -- teach secondary school while continuing to search for a college/university position?

This is something I am considering, though I must admit I fear that if I get the license and go teach high school, I will give up my original aspirations. While the pay isn't all that great, it *is* steady income, with benefits. At the same time, taking on fulltime work w/a hectic schedule, will keep me from writing and researching as much as I should.  Still, it would offer more dignity than the endless, demeaning temp jobs I've endured!  It is just so hard to determine what would be for the best in the long run. :(

Anyone else have similar qualms, or know of anyone who has taken such a diversion down their career path?